Dave Shecter
I met Dave Shecter when he accompanied Jonathan Holbrook on his featured artist interview last fall. Dave Shecter stars in Jonathan Holbrook’s award-winning web series STILL. In December, reached out for me to help him gain exposure and increase sales for his EP American Dream. I listened to the four songs that comprise the EP and I became a fan of his music.
Dave describes his music as “a little bit country: upbeat country, modern day country, a foot-tapping kind of country. There’s a little bit of pop and classic rock in some of my songs.” Dave Shecter has a hard time fitting his music into a specific genre mold. Dave describes himself as “one of those artists who’s different. When you look at people like John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot and even Neil Diamond and you try to fit those guys into a certain genre, it’s hard to do.
We’re excited because Dave Shecter gave Amused Now permission to distribute American Dream on AmusedNow.com. The EP is available at the top of the right side-bar and on the tab Buy Exclusive Music.
Dave Shecter is a self-taught musician with an ear for music. Dave’s father plays the piano. Dave says he’s a “late bloomer” and didn’t start playing the guitar until high school. “I started from there, writing a little bit of lyrics and music, and the next thing you know, twenty years later, finally putting out some songs.”
Growing up, Dave listened to a lot of rock-n-roll. John Denver is one of his biggest songwriting influencers. “I’ve seen him many times in concert.” He also listened to Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Diamond. You can definitely hear their effect on Dave’s music.
Dave wrote the music and the lyrics himself. He writes the music and melodies with the lyrics on acoustic guitar. He then goes into the studio and adds the rest of the band. He adds the vocals last. Pearl recorded the vocals on all four songs in American Dream.
Pearl
Dave met Pearl through her mother-in-law, who mentioned to Dave that Pearl was auditioning for American Idol and that she had previously won the Filipino version of the show. Pearl met with Dave “and she started singing some of her songs and I thought: You have a great voice! I played some of my songs, and it just went from there. We started recording together and the four-song LP is what we came up with.”
Because it’s so much more compelling to buy music when you understand the back story, I asked Dave to describe the inspiration behind each of the four songs on American Dream:
American Dream, the title track, describes Dave imagining what it would be like to be a musician on the road. “I can see being on the road can get to you after a while, but when you hit that stage, you forget everything. All that excitement: the lights, the noise. It just pumps you full of energy again.”
I Think I’m in Love is about someone who has a hard time expressing their feelings, who has a hard time saying, “I love you.” The song is about a woman in a long-time relationship getting ready to leave her man, when he turns to her and says, “Hey, wait a minute. I have something to say. I think I’m in love.”
Dave wrote Tulips after visiting the Skagit Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon, WA. “I went up there and I’m walking around the tulip fields and I’m thinking: Wow! How beautiful is this!”
Today is my Day started out as a poem, written just weeks after Dave decided to quit drinking alcohol twelve years ago. “I quit cold turkey.” In 2010, he added music, although “it’s kind of an a cappella song. If you listen to the lyrics, it makes a lot of sense. Alcohol is known as my evil demon; that’s where the song came from.”
In addition to Amused Now and Facebook, Dave markets American Dream through some fascinating websites. Dave is a member of SongCast, an internet radio station. SongCast circulates the four songs through their channels and they get played all over the world. “It’s an interesting site, because you can see when and where your songs are being listened to. My songs are listened to in some countries that I didn’t even realize had radios, so that’s pretty exciting!” Emerge Media from the UK contacted Dave about his music. “They wanted to use my songs in businesses throughout England to play in places where you hear elevator music, like in doctors’ offices.”
When I asked Dave about advice for other musicians, he stated emphatically, “Go solo, if you can sing and write music. Being in a band is hard, even when it’s just me and my singer. I’ve gone through a couple of singers. It’s very difficult to coordinate times and dates for rehearsals and recordings.”
I’m really excited about this opportunity to help Dave Shecter profit from his creativity.
Get your copy of American Dream today: https://amusednow.com/blog/product/dave-shecter-american-dream/
Watch the video interview on YouTube: http://youtu.be/B8uehCtlUr4
Click on the cover art to buy the music that influenced Dave Shecter’s sound:
Amused Now Featured Artist Series
Dave Shecter
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Cynthia Kahn, Founder of Amused Now
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